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Kansas City Scouts
The Kansas City Scouts were a team in the National Hockey League from 1974 to 1976. The franchise relocated from Kansas City, Missouri to Denver, Colorado in 1976, becoming the Colorado Rockies until 1982 when they relocated to New Jersey where they are now known as the New Jersey Devils. History In 1974, the NHL ended its first significant expansion period that started in 1967 by adding teams in Kansas City, Missouri and Washington, D.C. On June 8, 1972, Kansas City was awarded a franchise and Kemper Arena was constructed to host the team's home games. Kansas City had been the home of several minor league ice hockey teams through the years. The Scouts shared Kemper Arena with the Kansas City Kings basketball franchise of the National Basketball Association. The arrival of the Scouts and the Washington Capitals resulted in the NHL creating four divisions (and renaming the conferences, which each had two divisions) and the Scouts were placed in the Smythe Division of the Campbell Conference. The owners of the new Kansas City franchise, led by Edwin G. Thompson, originally wanted to call their team the "Kansas City Mohawks", since the Kansas City metropolitan area includes portions of Missouri and Kansas The name would have combined Missouri's postal abbreviation (MO) and the Kansas nickname of "Jayhawkers", but the Chicago Black Hawks objected because of the similarlity of "Mohawks" to their own name. The team then held a contest for people to name the new team. The name "Scouts" was chosen, named after The Scout which is located in Penn Valley Park and overlooks downtown. The iconic statue was featured on the team's logo. On October 9, 1974, the Scouts took the ice for the first time at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs 6–2. To allow construction to be completed on Kemper Arena, the Scouts played their first eight games on the road, where they lost seven and tied one. The Scouts made their home debut on November 2, 1974 losing to the Black Hawks 4–3 The following day, the Scouts' first victory came, against the Washington Capitals, by a score of 5–4, in Washington. Like many other expansion teams, the Kansas City Scouts performed poorly, garnering only 41 points with a record of 15-54-11 in their inaugural season, though this would be the better result of their two-season history. The Scouts' second season started out with some promise. Near the midway point of the season, they were competing for a playoff spot, with a 3–1 win over the California Golden Seals on December 28th, placing them just one point behind the St. Louis Blues and a playoff position in the weak Smythe Division. However, the Scouts went into free fall for their remaining 44 games. After going winless from December 30 to February 4 (0-14-2), they finally won a game against the Capitals on February 7, before going 0-21-6 for the rest of the season. The Scouts' second half crash left them with a season result of 12–56–12 and 36 points, still the worst record in the Scouts/Rockies/Devils franchise's history. During their two seasons, the Scouts went through three coaches–Bep Guidolin, Sid Abel (three-game interim stint), and Eddie Bush. The team had two captains, Simon Nolet and Guy Charron. Steve Durbano led the league in penalty minutes during the 1975–76 season. The franchise failed to make the playoffs in either season in Kansas City and won only 27 of 160 games, including a 7-66-7 mark away from home. With the 1972 startup of the rival World Hockey Association resulting in a combined 32 teams between the NHL and the WHA, the talent available to stock the new teams in Kansas City & Washington was stretched thin. In their first season, the Capitals set an NHL record for futility, losing 67 of 80 games, and winning only one on the road. The Scouts fared only marginally better (losing 56 games) and the 1974 NHL expansion was widely seen as having been a mistake. Attendance tailed off so much that the NHLPA wondered if the Scouts would make payroll. Relocation to Denver The Kansas City Scouts suffered from inflated player costs, undercapitalized ownership, an economic downturn in the Midwest, poor performances on the ice & weak attendance. They averaged just 8,218 per game during their two years in the 17,000-seat Kemper Arena (at a time when the league average was approximately 13,000). The team's group of 37 owners, buried in debt, mounted a season-ticket drive to raise more revenue. When only 2,000 more season tickets sold, they concluded that the Scouts were not a viable venture and opted to sell. While the Capitals were far worse on the ice, their owner, Abe Pollin had the financing and the patience to absorb the typical struggles of a 1970s expansion team. After just two seasons, the Scouts franchise was sold to a group headed by Jack Vickers, who moved the team to Denver and renamed it the Colorado Rockies. They played six NHL seasons in Denver, then relocated to the East Coast and became the New Jersey Devils in the fall of 1982. The last active Scouts player in the NHL was Wilf Paiement, who retired in 1988. Scouts draft pick Bob Bourne also retired after that season, but was traded to the New York Islanders before ever playing with the team. The Scouts and the California Golden Seals (who moved to become the Cleveland Barons the same year) were the first NHL teams to relocate since the 1935 season. Coaching History *1974-1975: Bep Guidolin *1975-1976: Bep Guidolin, Sid Abel and Eddie Bush Facts *Location: Kansas City, Missouri *Arena: Kemper Arena Category:National Hockey League teams Category:Teams in Missouri